"The food scarcity is real, and it is going to get a lot worse...
The supply chain is in a state of collapse," says Mike Adams, the "Health Ranger," an outspoken consumer health advocate, award-winning investigative journalist, internet activist, and science lab director.
"Don't panic," he says, "get prepared.... This is going to be the biggest shock of our lifetimes."
The Fed insists it can tighten monetary policy and tackle inflation without hurting the economy. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and other central bankers claim the economy is strong enough to handle higher interest rates. Peter Schiff said this is just another in a long line of arrogant miscalculations by the Fed.
As the central bank begins to raise rates and gets set to shrink its balance sheet, some analysts worry that the Fed will make a mistake and tighten too much. But Peter said the Fed already made the mistake.
"It’s not about the Fed might make a mistake. They’ve already made nothing but mistakes. The Fed has never done anything right. And because they made so many mistakes in the past, they’ve already doomed us in the future. It’s not about the mistakes they may make. It’s about the mistakes they’ve already made.”
And Peter said given all of the mistakes the central bankers have made in the past, it seems certain there will be more mistakes moving forward.
"The mistake they’re going to make in the future is not tightening too much, but not tightening enough — bowing down to the political pressure once the economy really starts to tank and the markets are deep in bear-market territory. When the Fed takes its foot off the brake and slams it back on the gas, that’s when the economy is going over a cliff because inflation is going to run out of control.”
Peter pointed out the recent plunge in speculative stocks and said it was a function of the mistakes the Fed has already made.
"2021 was peak insanity caused by the most reckless of all monetary policies by the Fed, which created the mother of all inflation. And now the Fed wants to try to put the genie back in the bottle. It doesn’t want to accept any responsibility for having allowed the genie out of the bottle. It wants to blame it all on Putin. It wants to blame it all on COVID.
But it thinks it’s a simple task to undo the damage. All they’ve got to do is jack rates back up to 2.5, 3%, get there quickly, and because we have such a strong economy with a super-hot labor market, the Fed can do today what it never could do in the past because the economy now is so much stronger than it was in the past. Well, it’s not stronger. It’s just a bigger bubble.”
But the central bankers at the Fed don’t seem to understand that.
"In fact, probably the only thing that’s bigger than this bubble is the egos of the FOMC members and how clueless they are about economic reality.”
In 2006 and 2007, the Fed insisted there was no problem in the housing market. When it became clear there was a problem, the central bankers said, “No worries, it’s contained to subprime.” When the financial markets crashed in 2008 and the Fed started quantitative easing, Ben Bernanke said the central bank was not monetizing the debt and that it would sell all of the bonds it was buying after the emergency was over.
During the pandemic, they said printing trillions of dollars wouldn’t cause consumer prices to rise. When inflation reared its ugly head, they promised it was transitory. Now they’ve conceded it’s not transitory, but assure us they can fix it. They say they can raise rates without hurting the economy.
So, why should we believe them?
Peter said he thinks it’s “three strikes and you’re out.”
"Strike one – subprime contained. Strike two – inflation is transitory. Strike three – we can raise interest rates. The economy is strong enough to withstand it. I think all of the Fed’s credibility is going to be lost when that mistake is revealed.”
“Challenges in the food and energy markets could get much worse and lead to significant disruptions in the global supply chain if the Russian-Ukraine war stretches out longer than expected,” said Ivo Pezzuto, Professsor of Global Economics, Competitiveness, and Digital Transformation at the International School of Management in Paris.
Goldmoney's Founder, James Turk, and Head of Research, Alasdair Macleod, discuss why global geopolitical developments have hastened a commodity-driven currency revolution, and what the implications are for the dollar, euro and yen.
From loose, looser, loosest policy to tight, tighter, tightest? Ukraine agricultural harvests will be cut in half this year. Is China signaling preparation for war with the west?
As Ted Carpenter writes on Antiwar.com, it sure seems like the Biden Administration is doing all it can to prolong the war in Ukraine.
Sending weapons that have little chance of making a big difference in the outcome only keeps the fighting and killing going strong, and the Administration has shown no interest in pushing a quick diplomatic end to the war.
On the contrary, Biden openly calling for regime change and a war crimes trial makes diplomacy nearly impossible. Why prolong the fighting?
US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan gave us a hint, when he told NBC News over the weekend that the US wants " a weakened and isolated Russia."
Government forbids competition in currencies. Why is that? Is it because The Fed's dollar would quickly lose the competition with gold, silver, and perhaps even Bitcoin?
Government can't create gold out-of-thin-air (like it does with dollars) to fund its expansion into every aspect of our lives. But change is in the air.
Doug Casey, founder of "The International Man" discusses with David Lin, anchor for Kitco News, why the dollar is on a long-term secular decline and will eventually be displaced as the global reserve currency.
The macro landscape has shifted tremendously in Gold’s favor over the past few months. The yield curve will invert soon, signaling a recession in the next 6 to 18 months (average of 12).
Meanwhile, the Russian invasion into Ukraine is going to disrupt global energy and food markets, leading to persistent and likely higher inflation this year.
A historical parallel could be the 1973 to 1975 period which included a bear market and stagflationary recession. The Gold surged and peaked near the end of the bear market and recession while Silver and general commodity prices peaked well before Gold.
Gold is on the cusp of making one of its most significant breakouts. It has upside targets of $3,000 and $4,000 which could be hit in 2024. Silver will likely break $50 but it is less certain if it can hit $100 in this scenario.
With digital gold acting more like digital lead in recent weeks, as bitcoin and the broader crypto sector trade as high-beta tech stocks perhaps helping tech funds satisfy margin calls, the real gold has no such qualms and after flatlining for much of the past 18 months, has broken out solidly to the upside, and just today spike more than 3%, rising to session high of $2,063.53
Why $2,063.53? Because $2,063.54 was the closing high on August 6, 2020 when gold hit an all time high in the aftermath of the Fed's money debasement frenzy when the Fed's balance sheet exploded by hundreds of billions weekly.
But while technical selling may have emerged at this key resistance level, we expect it to be taken out shortly, with even Goldman raising its gold forecast overnight, writing that in light of the Russia-Ukraine war, the bank is raising its gold price target over different time horizons. Targets raised for:
3-month horizon to USD2,300 vs. $1950 previous. 6-month horizon to USD2,500, from $2050 previous. 12-month horizon to USD2,500 vs. $2150 previous.”
Why? Because "An increase in demand from consumers, investors, central banks due to the rising geopolitical uncertainty."
Gareth Soloway says China is going to try to dethrone the U.S. dollar as world reserve currency with their new digital Yuan. Gold is rallying to an eight-month high as inflation rises and geopolitical concerns heighten.
This week we explore the price movements of gold, silver, US dollar, equities, and more amid the rumors of a potential interest rate rise? Have the markets already priced in an anticipated interest rate rise?
John Williams, founder of ShadowStats, calculates inflation using the same methodology that the government used to have for calculating the consumer price index (CPI).
Williams told David Lin, anchor for Kitco News, that the true headline CPI number is loser to 15%, not 7%, as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Here's why the government has a political incentive to "suppress" the reported inflation number.
JP Cortez of the Sound Money Defense League discusses with David Lin, anchor for Kitco News the importance of eliminating sales taxes on physical gold and silver, which he considers "sound money".
Demetri Kofinas speaks with Julius Krein, the editor of American Affairs, a quarterly journal of policy and political-economy that delves into the deeper sociopolitical, cultural, and economic issues facing America and other Western countries.
The episode is broken into two parts, the first hour of which focuses on issues of political-economy, policy, and market dynamics that have driven the American economy into a state of “proletarianization,” where its citizens are increasingly ruled by an oligarchy of global elites whose insatiable appetite for wealth and power is endangering the very systems of free-market capitalism and liberal democracy that this kakistocracy claims to uphold.
It’s an outcome that Julius Klein would refer to as “capitalism without competence and feudalism without nobility.”
The second hour of today’s conversation is, unsurprisingly, the most satisfying insofar as Demetri and Julius tackle the socio-political and cultural dimensions and manifestations of the problems created by the perversions of what was earlier described as the “proletarianization” or conversion of the American economy and political system into a more corrupt, upwardly sclerotic, and extractive system of governance than anything experienced in America since at least the Gilded Age.
What separates Jim from millions of his fellow financial journalists, commentators, and authors is the historical perspective that he brings, informed not just by the immense volume of books and periodicals that he’s consumed over the course of his lifetime, but primarily by the wisdom of his own lived experiences and lessons learned from the experiences of others that he’s had the privilege to know and interview over the course his life.
